Homecoming bosses slap ban on whisky to keep major sponsor sweet

THE centrepiece event of Scotland's Homecoming celebrations is under fire after being forced to ban whisky products from its food and drink showcase.

Independent producers and distilleries have been frozen out of The Gathering, being held in Edinburgh in July, despite organisers promising to promote small companies and home-grown products.

But a sponsorship deal with the world's biggest whisky company, Diageo, which is running its own showcase tent for its products, has led to the ban.

One whisky producer which had signed a deal to take space at the event has condemned the move as "a complete nonsense".

It has also been described as "unfortunate" by the leading industry body Scotland Food and Drink, which is helping to organise the Scottish Produce Market. Officials insisted it was unprecedented for whisky to be banned from such an event.

Organisers at The Gathering were last night forced to apologise after a number of whisky firms had to be turned away, but blamed a breakdown in communications. Instead, products like cheese, shortbread, ice cream, oysters and chocolate will be available to sample.

However, one firm forced out of The Gathering has accused Diageo of trying to "monopolise" the event. Alex Nicol, managing director of Spencerfield, an independent producer in Inverkeithing, Fife, whose brands include Sheep Dip and Pig's Nose, said: "It's a complete stitch-up. We are a small, independent company and now find we've been bulldozed out of one of the biggest cultural dates in Scotland's events calendar.

"We were recently informed by Scotland Food and Drink that our application to be part of the Scottish Produce Market had been rejected due to a conflict with Diageo, one of the event sponsors.

"But The Gathering's website clearly states that 'traders can sell a wide variety of high-quality Scottish fare produced by themselves'. We do not present any threat to Diageo, but this action is typical of big companies."

Fiona Richmond, project manager at Scotland Food and Drink, said: "We did have interest from a number of whisky companies in taking space, and although we wouldn't have been able to accommodate them all, it is a bit unfortunate that whisky products will not be available.

"It's a critical part of the food and drink industry and we need to keep alive small independent producers."

Diageo's sponsorship deal with The Gathering, which is understood to be worth up to 50,000, will see it run two days of taster sessions and master classes inside a huge marquee. People will be able to sample some of its best-known malt whisky brands, including Talisker, Dalwhinnie, Cragganmore and Glenkinchie.

Jamie Sempill, director of The Gathering, said: "There will not be any whisky products at all available at the Scottish Produce Market, simply because we will have a separate whisky fair.

"It would be completely going against the spirit of our agreement with Diageo, who have been superb sponsors, if we were to allow other whisky producers to take space."

No-one at Diageo was available to comment last night.

Exports hit 3bn for first time

WHISKY has long been one of the UK's leading exports, and overseas sales broke the 3 billion barrier for the first time last year.

In China alone, the whisky market is worth 44 million a year to Scottish distillers. It is one of the fastest growing in the world.

This month is seeing the biggest ever celebration of the national drink to coincide with the Year of Homecoming, with dozens of events being held all over the country.

Diageo, which sells about 8 billion worth of whisky every year, employs about 4,500 workers in Scotland alone.

The company, whose other brands include Guinness, Baileys, Smirnoff and Tanqueray, trades in some 180 countries. In contrast Spencerfield has three employees and a turnover of about 500,000.

This website and its associated newspaper adheres to the Independent Press Standards Organisation's Editors' Code of Practice.
If you have a complaint about editorial content which relates to inaccuracy or intrusion, then contact the
Editor by clicking here.

If you remain dissatisfied with the response provided then you can contact the IPSO by
clicking here.

The Scotsman provides news, events and sport features from the Edinburgh area. For the best up to date information relating to Edinburgh and the surrounding areas visit us at The Scotsman regularly or bookmark this page.

For you to enjoy all the features of this website The Scotsman requires permission to use cookies.

Find Out More ▼

What is a Cookie?

What is a Flash Cookie?

Can I opt out of receiving Cookies?

About our Cookies

Cookies are small data files which are sent to your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome etc) from a website you visit. They are stored on your electronic device.

This is a type of cookie which is collected by Adobe Flash media player (it is also called a Local Shared Object) - a piece of software you may already have on your electronic device to help you watch online videos and listen to podcasts.

Yes there are a number of options available, you can set your browser either to reject all cookies, to allow only "trusted" sites to set them, or to only accept them from the site you are currently on.

However, please note - if you block/delete all cookies, some features of our websites, such as remembering your login details, or the site branding for your local newspaper may not function as a result.

The types of cookies we, our ad network and technology partners use are listed below:

Revenue Science ►

A tool used by some of our advertisers to target adverts to you based on pages you have visited in the past. To opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Google Ads ►

Our sites contain advertising from Google; these use cookies to ensure you get adverts relevant to you. You can tailor the type of ads you receive by visiting here or to opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Digital Analytics ►

This is used to help us identify unique visitors to our websites. This data is anonymous and we cannot use this to uniquely identify individuals and their usage of the sites.

Dart for Publishers ►

This comes from our ad serving technology and is used to track how many times you have seen a particular ad on our sites, so that you don't just see one advert but an even spread. This information is not used by us for any other type of audience recording or monitoring.

ComScore ►

ComScore monitor and externally verify our site traffic data for use within the advertising industry. Any data collected is anonymous statistical data and cannot be traced back to an individual.

Local Targeting ►

Our Classified websites (Photos, Motors, Jobs and Property Today) use cookies to ensure you get the correct local newspaper branding and content when you visit them. These cookies store no personally identifiable information.

Grapeshot ►

We use Grapeshot as a contextual targeting technology, allowing us to create custom groups of stories outside out of our usual site navigation. Grapeshot stores the categories of story you have been exposed to. Their privacy policy and opt out option can be accessed here.

Subscriptions Online ►

Our partner for Newspaper subscriptions online stores data from the forms you complete in these to increase the usability of the site and enhance user experience.

Add This ►

Add This provides the social networking widget found in many of our pages. This widget gives you the tools to bookmark our websites, blog, share, tweet and email our content to a friend.